Down to Earth – Episode 2 Planting Out (1990)

YouTube ref: https://youtu.be/ebHQIat2-hc

Date: 16 April 2015 

[Music plays as Gardening Australia logo appears on screen with the number 2 and the words Planting Out]

[Image shows someone digging a hole with a trowel.  Image pans out to show Kevin Handreck digging]

Kevin Handreck:  Well that looks about right for that planting hole. 

[Image shows Kevin Handreck placing pot plant into hole then removing it again]

Let’s see, yes I think we can manage with that.

[Image shows Kevin Handreck removing plant from pot]

First thing to do in planting of course is to tip the plant out of the pot and have a very good look at the root ball.  You can see that there’s a lot of roots around this one here.  I’m going to cut through some of those. 

[Image shows Kevin Handreck cutting through roots of pot plant with a knife.  Camera pans out to wider image]

That sounds a bit drastic but it’s very important otherwise some of these can keep on circling around and they’re not going to do the plant any good at all.  In fact there’s so many down the bottom here that I’m going to pull some of those away. 

[Image shows Kevin Handreck pulling roots from bottom of pot plant]

There's plenty of ends there that will soon have new roots growing from them.

Now let’s just see how that goes. 

[Image shows Kevin Handreck placing plant back into hole.  Camera pans in for close up]

That one is in fact a bit deep that hole so what we need to do is to put some of the soil back in there.

[Image shows Kevin Handreck lifting plant and placing some soil in hole underneath, then placing plant back in hole.  Camera pans out to wider image]

The right height is so that the top of the root ball is about a centimetre below the surface of the soil that you’re going to put around there.

[Image shows close up of plant in hole]

OK, well that’s about right there.  You can see that the hole here is about twice the size of the root ball and that’s important because we’re going to fill moist soil back in there and really make good contact between that new soil and the mix of the root ball.

[Image shows Kevin Handreck pouring water into hole around plant]

Righto, the next thing is to put plenty of water around there, really puddle it around.  Fill the soil in. 

[Image shows Kevin Handreck placing soil in hole around plant.  Camera pans out to wider image]

That allows the roots to come out easily from the root ball into the soil around there.

[Image shows close up of Kevin Handreck placing more soil around plant]

Seeing as this is a sloping site here we need to have a bit of a rim around the bottom here so that the water that we put on there isn’t going to keep going away.

[Image shows Kevin Handreck forming a rim around the plant.  Camera pans out to wider image]

Firm it down well and then give it some more water.

[Image shows Kevin Handreck pushing soil down then pouring water around plant.  Image changes to close up of plant in ground]

There it is.  I think that should be right.

[Screen fades out]